If you want to mash your buttons, eat pizza, chat with friends, go take a bio-break in the middle of the fight you have LFR.
If you want to mash your buttons in right order but not perfectly, if you want to stand in wrong shit on the floor but no too long, if you generally want to screw something up but know what you screwed and get it correct you go normal.
If you want everything done perfectly you go raid hc mode (well, ofc, you can fuck up too :P).
If you don't want to raid, rotations are worthless. Just spam what spell name you like.

Raiding in WoW is like racing down a busy highway, trying to escape the cops while avoiding crashing into every car and obstacle in your path. You might notice the road ahead of you and any obstacles you have to avoid, but how often do you get a chance to look out at the sky overhead or the mountains to the side? Can you spend much time glancing at the trees or lakes you're passing by while you're busy trying to avoid a fiery and horrible death?

The OP isn't saying that the game is too "difficult" for him to play it well; he's saying it's too "micro managey" for him to enjoy it. People replying with comments like "probably because you're bad at the game" or "and you consider yourself intelligent" are either ignorant or full of themselves. There's a huge difference between fun and skill. It is certainly possible to be very good at something and yet hate it immensely.

I don't agree that the complexity of this game is what's driving away most subs, but I do agree that this game is becoming too complex. I think I would have much more fun hitting only 10-20 buttons a minute, where my success is boosted by intelligent use and proper timing of abilities, while actually be able to engage my focus on the combat and the visuals than to have to manage hitting 40-60 in a heavily micro-managed rotation that requires a large amount of focus, where I'm then being taxed to also pay attention to my surroundings. Many players, myself included, pride themselves on being able to manage their role while also paying attention to their surroundings -- they consider that skill, and will happily lambast other players who appear to lack that ability. But that "skill" isn't fun. And it can be quite taxing.

Originally Posted by Hurax

Jesus Christ? I could not follow his radical left-wing path. No, even if I did believe in a personal god, I would not have the guts, the extreme altruism and radical anti-capitalism necessary to call myself a Christian.

Originally Posted by ngc2440

Hyperbole police! We have been alerted to several reports of some suburbian white guys complaining about racism. Ok I am going to give you a warning. You have 60 days to put on your big boy britches and stop being a whiny kid. Seriously. Time to grow up.

That's not at all true, totem twisting was a thing, downscaled heals and probably more i don't remember, but it was way harder back then, ofc if you just spammed chain heal like you seem to have done, that's just being bad at the game.

I do agree that some parts of wow like hardcore raiding and other stuff like high rated arena can be complex but for most part I don't think so.

p.s. oh and if you still think it’s complex I’ll upload a video of my 3 year old farming, she loves to do it.

I'm pretty sure the OP is talking specifically about competitive raiding, not about farming or casual and careless gameplay.

Originally Posted by Hurax

Jesus Christ? I could not follow his radical left-wing path. No, even if I did believe in a personal god, I would not have the guts, the extreme altruism and radical anti-capitalism necessary to call myself a Christian.

Originally Posted by ngc2440

Hyperbole police! We have been alerted to several reports of some suburbian white guys complaining about racism. Ok I am going to give you a warning. You have 60 days to put on your big boy britches and stop being a whiny kid. Seriously. Time to grow up.

Even though i havent been playing for quite a while now, i see where you're coming from. So i can repeat my point that i already made a few times: the content in mmorpgs was not meant to be dungeons, bosses or loot, otherwise you could just have a single player game with all that, but it was meant to be player interaction. Blizzard got it right at first in vanilla by accident really, then they started "thinking" how to "improve" the content, without even understanding what a content should be in mmos. So they improved the decorations, the settings, the stage, and destroyed the real content, the game turned from art to science.

Its actually easier if you know how to Google. Boss fights have harder mechanics. Rotations for the most part are more complicated, but they kinda have to be. I feel like wows core playerbase needs complicated things to stay engaged. Then new players who haven't been trained through the years are thrown against a brick wall. That and wows graphics/lol wow is bad attitude is why wow is losing subs. For the long time players it even seems easier because they have gotten so much better. When wrath was out i thought the icc dungeons were very hard. Then early cata came and it was alot harder. at first i hated it, but then it became easy even before the nerfs. I got better and cata forced me to be better. Point is compared to cata MoP is easier. Compared to pre cata mop is on par or harder. The difficulty is probably balanced the best to please new players and old players the most.

Well good thing new players have 90 levels to figure things out. There is a reason why new characters don't start out with all their abilities and talents at lvl 1. Blizzard has made learning how to play the game simpler than ever and the only way for someone to have a difficult time is to be brain dead. New doesn't mean stupid.

New players have 90 levels to figure things out, true... That was always the case though, be it level 60, 70, 80 and 85 respectively before.. The array of abilities was always coming in piece by piece. And it was possibly easier to grasp back in the days, when we actually had some active "event" happening every time we've dinged but another level. Go to the trainer, learn new spells or existing spell upgrades. Get talents of a wider range of talents than there are now. A player was a lot more exposed to it's tool set. But we can handle it as a matter of opinion which was the better way.
Blizzard has made learning the game simpler, that's only true in parts. The part where it isn't true is the leveling process from start to finish. Whereas it's true that players have it a lot easier to get from 1 - 90 today, than it was to get from 1 - 60 once, it does at the same time backfire. Because a total new player is held by the hand, lead through the game in (compared to the past) easy mode. And once they hit the max level, reality sets in.

To say, that the only way of having a difficult time is to be brain dead, or stupid. That's quite a bit short sighted and ignorant. Because you look at it only from a Black and White viewpoint. If you are not good at it, you have to be an idiot. If you are good at it, you have sufficient intelligence. I claim, and always have, that intelligence has a very limited role in mastering the game, to begin with.
The key to success for the game is to sit in a happy medium zone. Let me bring in some evidence, to make my point a bit more understandable.
Let's have a look at social media platform games, Facebook etc.
We frown upon them. Farmville, Cityville, what ever the ville, Angry Birds, Sim City, and the list goes on and on... Resulting in a number of 250+ million people playing these games every day. Why is that? They are free.... Well, only true in parts. You either have an army of friends playing with you, or you rake out some bucks here and there... The reason why there are so many people playing these games is the simplicity of them.
As I said in my posting, to be able to see, one has to take a step back and look at it from another perspective. WoW as a whole is definitely too complex to keep a casual person - that has a busy real life with job, family, house, and what not, that grabs a trial version and maybe even subs for a few month - around. In order to learn the game, and to learn a class/spec one has to invest quite some time. And I am pretty sure that 99 out of 100 people don't want to spend their spare and fun time with learning something complex. They want to log in their game and play on without much obstacles in the way.

Maybe one only start to understand when they experience a new players view first hand. I have. I play since vanilla. My woman became a Wrath Baby. She started playing shortly before the ICC patch. Holy moses. I've witnessed things, I haven't even remotely though of before. the most simple tasks, none of us is wasting but a thought at anymore can be and are challenging.
Your bags are full.. Well now what... How to get rid of that shit? What's all that stuff in my bags anyway... New gear, how to put that even on... How to "communicate" with NPC's.. I remember when she figured out that she can vendor her trash.. FML it took her 5 - 10 minutes at the vendor. We just spam click the crap over to the vendor. She was comparing what she has, what she doesn't have. What she may need or may not. It was hilarious, to me.... Not so for the new player she was, it was a lot to learn. Years later now.. She became a great healer on her priest, and druid. She turned out to become an awesome boomkin, much better at it, than I ever was. She rapes faces on her pally in BGs. And she plays the AH like a violin pro.. But to get there, that took a lot of time investment and encouragement from me to NOT throw the game off her computer again. I see her as a prime example of the majority of new perspective subscribers. And I believe that the evolution of the games subscriber base reflects that somehow. The game has always lost subs, from year 1 and forth.. But for a long time that number has been replenished with new subs replacing the ones who quit, and then some. And today? For a few years Blizzard struggles to keep the sub base somewhat stable, to slow down the decline. A growth is nowhere to be seen. And the complexity of the game as a whole, and the characters in particular plays into this tendency. I am not saying that's the sole and only reason, but it contributes for sure.

- Im playing shadow priest and i think many would agree it is a complex class to play. Well, i would agree with them if there is no addon which helps playing a lot, i mean a lot (Im using Tellmewhen)

- since i played most classes, i only dont like what they did to holy paladins making them having a rotation with that combo points (holy power thingy) and a rotation healer is most dull and restrictive way to heal

I'll agree that the game has indeed become more and more complex over the years, but I won't agree that it is a primary reason as to why the game has lost subscriptions over the years. Personally, the increased complexity is what keeps me more and more interested in the game. If all I did for eight years was autoshot + AFK, I would have quit like mid-BC. Even healing back then was pretty easy, since you used like three spells for the majority of encounters (CoH + PoM + Renew/PoH, depending on the encounter). I solo healed our entire melee team and our tank on Loot Reaver through Pounds with those three buttons. Nowadays I'd never even dream of being able to do something like that, and that's what makes the game more entertaining to me.

I would come back and heal instantly if downranking came back, I actually enjoyed it, and it really separated good from great healers. Yes there is an intermediate heal now that does okay heal at slow speeds for good mana, but I remember as a resto shaman in TBC and early WotLK having 2 bindings for levels of chain heals, 3 for lesser healing wave and 2 for greater healing wave. Then again different strokes for different folks.

I'll agree that the game has indeed become more and more complex over the years, but I won't agree that it is a primary reason as to why the game has lost subscriptions over the years. Personally, the increased complexity is what keeps me more and more interested in the game. If all I did for eight years was autoshot + AFK, I would have quit like mid-BC. Even healing back then was pretty easy, since you used like three spells for the majority of encounters (CoH + PoM + Renew/PoH, depending on the encounter). I solo healed our entire melee team and our tank on Loot Reaver through Pounds with those three buttons. Nowadays I'd never even dream of being able to do something like that, and that's what makes the game more entertaining to me.

I agree with that.
Especially in regard of existing players the complexity is the least reason to quit imo.

I notice an imbalance in regards of leveling content and endgame content. And that got actually a little better now in MoP and gives new players more time to learn.
If I take my hunter for example. In Cata, I was able, and in fact did exactly that, to level from 80 - 85 with nothing but Send Pet - SS - Autoshot.
Basically a 2 button "rotation" if I count my pet in. I didn't even have to bother with mark. It was just ridiculous easy. Now if I was a new player... I can see how they getting a shock once they've arrived in the reality of the game at end level. If the leveling process isn't made to make one use their abilities, how can they even learn them properly?

I would come back and heal instantly if downranking came back, I actually enjoyed it, and it really separated good from great healers. Yes there is an intermediate heal now that does okay heal at slow speeds for good mana, but I remember as a resto shaman in TBC and early WotLK having 2 bindings for levels of chain heals, 3 for lesser healing wave and 2 for greater healing wave. Then again different strokes for different folks.

I believe the sole reason for the elimination of the spell ranks was - as with many other things - PVP... In order to prevent healers from being too OP and to force them to burn through their mana, they got rid of the spell ranks. And yes, I liked them better too.... But at the same time, while they existed, the healing meters played so little role, if any at all.
What mattered was whether one did their assigned job or not..... You keep this group up there.. Don't let anyone die. No one cared about your output, the result was what counted. Call me nostalgic, but I preferred that time over todays meter obsession.

I... what? Nothing about these rotations are complicated, maybe to younger players or gamers with less experience/coordination they can be a challenge but I know a 14 year old girl who plays resto/balance fairly well. Out of the many specs only a few are complicated (at least in my view)

Does gender have an impact on a person's ability to press Wild Growth?

It's not complex at all. Pretty much every spec has self-explanatory gameplay now. You can get an idea of what you're meant to be doing without looking at any external source, due to things like procs highlighting the way.

I think OP has a valid point here. WOW has become very complex, maybe even too complex for its own good. Sure there are lots of internet resources where you can learn about anything in the game. However you usually HAVE TO to that. Just ask yourself a question - is that fun? Because the one and only reason to play WOW or just about any MMO out there is to have fun. Some, usually younger, players seem to have another reason to play - the feeling of achievement, to be proud they can be better at something then those around them. Such players want the game to become more and more complex, to have very hard heroic encounters that are never nerfed, gear and vanity items that are unreachable for 99% of playerbase. Those kinds of players don't care if the other 99% of subscribers won't have fun playing the game, they just want to be an elite group among "commons". Sometimes it even goes to absurd levels, that's when we see threads filled with rage over normal raids nerfs, LFR wipe buffs and such. But apart from those who desire to prove themselves and mock the others, there's only fun that can attract players.

For a newcomer to quickly get to know every aspect of such a vast game as WOW, it takes time and dedication. It can be considered quite hard. Of course being a seasoned veteran gamer you can understand and master new stuff in no time. But stop for a moment and think - is it fun? Are you happy you have over 50 keybinds, lots of addons cluttering the screen? That you have to enchant, gem and reforge the gear you have acquired? That you need to search for information on perfect rotations and stat weights? Do you enjoy maintaining several buffs, watch timers, dps/hps? If you do like all that and you have fun playing, then think where is your fine line between fun and tedious? Will you still have fun if you need 10 more keybinds? Will it be more exciting to apply some kind of runes on all your gear to customize stats on items even more? Will it be engaging to maintain some additional mechanic like proximity to your target all the time (different spells and abilities become more efficient at specific distances from your target)?

Myself, I'd like to see some complexity gone after MoP. I'd like to see ~3-5 abilities gone from each class, I won't miss enchanting my gear if it goes away (on the other hand I like gemming). I won't regret not having stats like Hit and Expertise, so that I don't have to constantly reforge the hell out of my gear after each upgrade. I wasn't into DK class and I regret that the monks were added to the game, so I don't want to see a new class any time soon. I'd like to see the PVP arms race toned down - there's so much control, silences, interrupts and instant casts that it's getting ridiculous!